How Great a Salvation!

Just a brief prayer:

Speak, O Lord, as we come to you
To receive the food of your Holy Word.
Take your truth, plant it deep in us;
Shape and fashion us in your likeness.[1]

And we ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.

I’ve never quite understood why it is that people who, like myself, enjoy murder mysteries or detective stories go to the expense of purchasing a book, and then, out of impatience or curiosity or whatever else it is, they then go to the back of the book, and they find out whodunnit. As a Scotsman, that is a dreadful waste of money and time. But if you’re one of those people, perhaps you can explain to me afterwards what motivates that.

However, that being said, one can make a fairly good case for taking that approach to our study of the Bible. And sometimes I say to the congregation, “You know, we need to learn to read the Bible backwards.” So, for example, if we go to the book of Revelation for our encouragement, we know that the kingdoms of this world have become, ultimately, the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever.[2] That’s a wonderfully reassuring and helpful understanding of how everything ends.

In a different way, but similarly, John in his Gospel helps us when, towards the end of chapter 20, he explains that “although there were many more things that Jesus had said and done that could have been recorded, these have been written down,” he says, “in order that you might believe and that by believing you might have life in his name.”[3]

And interestingly—and helpfully, I found it—that Peter does the exact same thing. And if you turn in your Bible just to the twelfth verse of chapter 5, you realize how helpful it is that he tells us exactly what it is that he sets out as his plan and course of action in the course of these five chapters. And as I turn to it myself, you find that it is clearly there: “After you[’ve] suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his … glory,”[4] and so on; and then, as he brings it to a close in his final greetings, he says, “I have written briefly to you, exhorting and declaring that this is the true grace of God. Stand firm in it.”[5] So he lets us know that everything that precedes in this discipleship manual, we might say, is in order that the readers are aware of the grace of God, about which we sang in our opening song—and it reinforced it for us very, very well. He does the same thing, interestingly, in his second letter, where he ends up by saying, “I want you to take care that you do not lose your stability.”[6]

And Peter himself, who is the writer of the letter—we know him, because we have seen him in the Gospel records. We know that Peter was essentially a hotheaded fisherman from the north shore of Galilee. He was the kind of individual who wanted to try things first, whether it was walking on the water or falling into the water. He was the kind of person in your class who always put his hand up and volunteered something, and he managed to put one foot in his mouth and then take it out so he could put his other foot in when he said something else. In that amazing encounter recorded in Matthew 16, one moment he is the recipient of the Father’s revelation. Jesus says to him, “You didn’t come up with this yourself. God the Father has made this known to you.”[7] And then, from being the recipient of the Father’s revelation, he immediately becomes the object of the devil’s deception.[8] And by the time we get to this particular point in history where he’s writing this, he has, if you like, grown into his own name—grown into the name that Jesus gives him when he encounters him, as we find it at the beginning of John.[9]

And so we’re introduced to him and to the readers. First of all, he introduces himself as “an apostle of Jesus Christ.” In a matter of just a few words, he identifies himself not in an individualistic way but as part of a larger company. We read in the Gospels that Jesus had ordained the Twelve that they might be with him and that then they might go out and preach the gospel.[10] And Peter is identifying himself in that way: sent by the Lord Jesus in order that they might be proclaiming the good news of Jesus. And the word that they were delivering was God’s word, that word which they then spoke preserved for us in the Scriptures, so that the written Word is the very Word that we were singing about in the previous song.

It’s important, I think, for us to recognize—especially in these days, when all sorts of people call themselves apostles—that what we’re dealing with is a unique identification of these individuals. And the message that they proclaimed was not their own. It wasn’t as if somehow or another, they got together, and somebody interviewed them and said, “I’m going to give you all five minutes each to tell people what the resurrection means to you,” which is a very contemporary way of approaching things.

First of all, they needed to know what the resurrection meant, and then they needed to proclaim the truth of that; and, of course, it mattered immensely to them. They spoke on the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, the authority that is in the Word of God itself—the authority that is given to the church in every generation.

In my experience at the present time, in the context of the culture as I understand it, there is a real tendency to lose confidence in the sufficiency and authority of the Bible itself. And whenever that has happened throughout history, then so many things have flowed from it. And it is important for us to remind ourselves of it.

This apostle, Peter, is writing to these individuals who have been identified for us in these various parts of Asia Minor. In other words, they were already scattered into modern-day Turkey. The gospel had spread rapidly after the resurrection of Jesus, after the Spirit of God had come; and by the time Peter is writing this letter, which I take to be some time in the 60s—probably in the earlier 60s—there were these groups of individuals who were scattered throughout all these different districts. It is a wonderful thing to realize that, as Luke records it for us in the Acts, every way along the journey of the history, he points out how it was the word of God that was increasing in its impact, and the numbers of the disciples were growing at the same time.[11]

And so we’re aware of the fact that these people, scattered as they are to these different parts, were there. I take it that they’re largely gentile congregations with a number of Jewish people present among them, although if you read the commentators, a lot of ink has been spilt deciding whether it’s a largely gentile congregation with a few Jewish people or whether it’s a largely Jewish congregation with a few gentile people—to which the average person says, “Does that really matter?” And the answer is, well, it matters, but not as much as we might think it matters. Because Peter is writing to them not on the basis of what they were but on the basis of what they are—that they are those who are identified in this particular way.

I think the picture that we have of these flags around us here and, as I say, these different pictures and identifications of those who are serving around the world give us something in our minds to ponder: scatterings of these little groups living in the context of pagan majorities. Now, just to say that, you realize what is different today, wherever we are. The churches in our countries, whether it’s here or in the States or in the United Kingdom or beyond, are really small gatherings of individuals called out by God who are living in an environment that is largely alien to them. These individuals to whom Peter writes live in the world, but they do not belong to that world.

Peter, when he writes this letter, would surely have in mind the occasion when, before Jesus goes to the cross, he prays to the Father in John 17. And in doing so, he says to the Father, “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.”[12] And so Peter is writing to these individuals—to us, as the readers of the text—who are the elect: elect exiles or strangers or sojourners living in these various places, and they are the chosen of God. The Old Testament picture of the people of Israel as called out by God, set apart to himself, is now revealed in this new covenant fellowship. And he’s going to mention that when he gets to chapter 2. And these individuals—we, like them, find ourselves as sojourners living in a real world amongst all of our friends and neighbors and yet moving towards a destination that has been picked out for us.

I think it’s important to see that the people of God are identified as exiles or strangers, rejected by the world because they have been elected by God, set in the context of the family of God. And the way in which Peter puts it here is quite interesting, isn’t it? “According to the foreknowledge of God the Father”—in other words, the active, creative work of divine love.

Again, Peter writes this letter out of the fullness of all that he knew of Jesus on a personal level. He was present, again, when he heard Jesus explaining in John chapter 6, “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”[13] And so Peter recognizes the wonder of his own personal relationship with Jesus, and out of the fullness of that, he writes to encourage those who have been called into the family of God. John puts it wonderfully, doesn’t he, when he says, “This is love, not that we have loved God but that he [has] loved us”[14] and made us his own?

The hymn writer in “Salvation’s Song” puts it poetically and briefly,

Loved before the dawn of time,
Chosen by my Maker,
Hidden in my Savior,
I am his, and he is mine,
Cherished for eternity.[15]

And that choice and purpose of God takes place through the ministry of the Holy Spirit: “in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ … for [the] sprinkling [of] his blood.” It’s interesting that he begins with sanctification. I take it that he’s speaking about the way in which we are made the very dwelling place of God by the work of the Spirit—that the initial work in our lives is that we become his children so that we might live as the dwelling place of God; and that in doing so, we live in obedience to Jesus; and in keeping with that, we’re sprinkled by the blood of Jesus. In other words, what God the Father has planned God the Son has procured and God the Holy Spirit applies to our lives.

When I was at Charlotte Chapel in Edinburgh, almost fifty years ago now, one of the assignments that was given to me was to teach 1 Peter as a discipleship class. And in the course of seeking to do that, one of the things we wanted to point out to those who had recently trusted in Christ: that they were—of each other—identified as those who’d been chosen by God the Father, who had been sprinkled by the blood of Jesus Christ, and who were sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

And it is in the awareness of that that he then says to him, “And grace and peace needs to be multiplied to you.” The end in view for the Christian living in an alien world is to live according to the divine pleasure of God. And as we do so, we recognize that the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus is essential for us, and we have been cleansed and made new, and we’re different.

Stibbs puts it quite wonderfully when he says, “It is noteworthy that the sprinkling of the blood is mentioned last,” possibly suggesting “that the cleansing virtue of Christ’s [blood] is available, and will be needed, [to] the end of our earthly pilgrimage …. Our calling is to obey; but when we fail the atoning blood can still be sprinkled.”[16]

Essentially, as he sets his course in the letter, he is making it perfectly clear that the people will understand who it is, where they belong, and to whom they belong.

In the 1970s, in the States and elsewhere, there were a number of musicals that emerged on the scene. And they were written along the lines of, I suppose, a Christianized version of Godspell. And I remember that they came to London in the early ’70s. And one of the songs that they sang in this musical goes like this:

You are the children of the kingdom of God.
You’re the chosen ones for whom the Savior came.
You’re his noble, new creation by the Spirit and the blood.
You’re the church that he has built to bear his name.[17]

And I suppose one of the things that would be essential to the folks as they became the recipients of this letter is to be reminded of the fact that who they are and what they are is on account of the eternal purposes of God: that before the dawning of time, again, as we’ve sung so helpfully—before all of that, in a way that is beyond our ability to fully comprehend, that God has called out a people for himself and that it is the utterly undeserved privilege of all who are in Christ to be included in that group.

And so he says, “May, then, grace and peace be multiplied to you. The riches of God at the expense of Christ, may they be poured out upon you. And may the peace…” (“You [will] keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you,”[18] and “being justified by faith, we have peace with God.”[19]) “May that be multiplied to you.”

The end in view for the Christian living in an alien world is to live according to the divine pleasure of God.

Now, that’s all by way just of these opening couple of verses. Here we have it: Peter, the writer; the recipients, scattered as they are, marked by these three things and on the encouraging end of this letter that is about to follow.

Now, let’s just pause and acknowledge that we are not in Cappadocia, nor are we in Bithynia, at least as far as I know, but we’re in Australia. And we are studying 1 Peter in a very different place from the context in which these individuals were living. The abiding Word of God is relevant in every place and in every context. But having grown up in the church, largely, and having been on the receiving end of Bible talks from different people over the years of my life, to my benefit, I have observed that in passages such as this (and I mean the whole book), it’s not uncommon—at least it hasn’t been uncommon—for people to say, “You know, this suffering about which Peter is about to speak, this ‘fiery trial’ and so on, we don’t really know very much about that. We think there may be a day that is coming when we will experience something along these lines.” And so it was always sort of hedged about: It must be for the missionary world or whatever else it is. But insults, the pushback of a culture—at least in the ’60s and ’70s, the people said, “Well, that’s largely unknown.”

But it’s not the ’60s and ’70s anymore. It’s now the world in which we’re living. I think it’s pretty fair to say we are beginning, we have begun to get a much greater understanding of what it means to live as strangers and what it means, then, to have a hope that stands beyond the test of time, that is able to face the challenges of life—the difficulties, the disappointments and so on of everyday existence—in a way that is markedly different.

Carl Trueman in one of his books acknowledges what I’m suggesting. He says, “The era when Christians could disagree with the broader convictions of the secular world and yet still find themselves respected as decent members of society at large”—that era “is coming to an end, if indeed it has not ended already. … Many of us are … now living as strangers in a strange new world.”[20] And Peter is going to go on and make more of this in chapter 2, but we’re not there at chapter 2. And I want us just to follow the outline of what follows.

And Peter here is providing us with, essentially, a doxology, a song of praise. This is, if you like, Peter’s version of Paul’s opening long, long sentence in Ephesians chapter 1. And he is marveling at the wonder of God’s grace in salvation. And so, that is exactly what he mentions. And that’s why I gave as our title for this “How Great a Salvation!” And you will see how he begins: “Blessed,” or praise be to, “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” because “according to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

Let’s just stop there for a moment on that word “mercy.” “Mercy.” In other words, God acts towards us in accordance with his character and with his resources. And the word actually assumes need on the part of ourselves as recipients and pity and compassion and provision on the part of the giver.

Now, when you think about “mercy,” it’s a word that is not often in everyday language, I don’t think. Every so often, somebody who is a school principal or something has to subject herself or himself to having their photograph taken for the annual report. And depending on the person, when the photographer comes, they may say to them, “Now, as you do this for me, I hope that you will do me justice, because if it’s good, then I’m going to give it to a few of my friends as well.” And the photographer, who’s been around for a long while, looking at the person, looking at me, says, “Begg, what you require is not justice but mercy. You require mercy. If I give you justice, you will not like that.”

And, of course, we understand this. Portia to Shylock, if you remember from school:

Though justice be thy plea, consider this:
That in the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy.[21]

Mercy!

Oh, the love that drew salvation’s plan!
Oh, the grace that brought it down to man!
Oh, the mighty gulf that God [spanned]
At Calvary!

Mercy there was great, and grace was free.[22]

One of the aspects of somebody who has really been grasped by this is a humility of heart, is an awareness of the fact that there is a dimension to the reality of our existence in Christ that is so up there and so beyond us and yet so precious to us at the same time, it leaves us with no basis upon which to go into our environment, into our world, and be anything other than aware of the fact that the only thing that distinguishes us from our unbelieving neighbors is the mercy of God—that were it not for the fact of God’s grace and mercy, we would not be distinguishable in any way at all.

And it’s important for us that we remind ourselves of that, because sometimes, in our zeal for evangelism, we can be somewhat abrupt. The story’s told of a Salvation Army girl somewhere in London, riding on the train, and she’s in a compartment for six, and into the compartment, at one of the stops, arrives a bishop. And he was going to do what bishops do. And he was already dressed in some of his garb, and he had one of the… What you call them? And he put that up on the rack, and the Salvation Army girl was in her uniform, and she sat opposite him, and she looked at him, and she thought, “This is an amazing opportunity for evangelism, right here.” And so she said to him, she said, “’Scuse me, Bishop. Is you saved?” And he said to her, “Do you mean have I been saved, or am I being saved, or will I be saved?”[23] Now, we don’t have her response to that, but she had encountered Bishop Lightfoot, the Greek scholar. And he clearly was saved, and he was prepared to articulate it for her in a way that, I hope, helped her forever after that.

It’s important… And I’m so excited about all these children, along with you, because, again, as I mentioned in answering the questions from our brother here, I am the beneficiary of people who were prepared to do what these young folks that we’ve just seen here have done. And it was a tremendous help to me as a youngster to be reminded of those three tenses of salvation, so that they taught me, “I have been saved from sin’s penalty, I am being saved from sin’s power, and one day, I will be saved from sin’s presence.” And the reality of it is in accordance with, on the basis of, the reality of God’s mercy.

Then: “born again to a living hope.” “A living hope.” And that is not some sentimental notion. It’s not a clinging to a possibility. Again, it is divine in its origin. And that’s the way in which he puts it: “He has caused us to be born again to a living hope.” “What must I do to be saved?” the Philippian jailer said. The answer was, “[Well,] believe [on] the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved.”[24] Now, what an amazing thing! “He has caused us to be born again.” As Paul puts it, we’ve been made alive together with Christ—that “being rich in mercy, because of [his] great love with which he loved us…”[25]

The only thing that distinguishes us from our unbelieving neighbors is the mercy of God.

And the remarkable thing about it, and the distinguishing feature for these people in these scattered contexts in the first century, was that hope was not something that was markedly obvious in the world of the day. In fact, life was tenuous. Life was short. Relationships were fragile. There was so much that represented almost the futility of it all. And one of the distinguishing features for these people was that they were “born again to a living hope”—not some dead, anachronistic notion or formula but to a genuine reality.

I haven’t been listening to prime minister’s question time for quite a long time now, because I lost it on my radio. But I used to tune in just to hear them making all those dreadful baying noises in Westminster. And there have been remarkable times, I’m prepared to confess, at the risk of accusation, that I was a fan of Margaret Thatcher. I was glad of the woman, the metal woman, the iron woman that she was. And I remembered this because I heard it a long, long time ago, and I’ve never forgotten it. And she was addressing somebody from the dispatch box, and she said to him, she said, “You are a no-hope politician full of no-hope policies working for a no-hope political party.” I said, “Well, okay. That sounds pretty clear to me. I think I understand the reality of that.” Absolutely hopeless!

Peter, the disciples—when they discovered that Jesus had arisen, that Jesus was Lord and living Lord and King, then what a radical transformation that made for them! I think there’s surely a reason why Francis Schaeffer in his day wanted always to begin in communicating the gospel with the resurrection of Jesus Christ—that he is the risen Lord and that he has brought us into a realm of reality that is unlike anything else before. We mentioned Shylock, but, you know, when in Hamlet his friend’s saying to him, “How is it … the clouds still hang on you?”—and he says, “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable / Seem to me … the uses of this [life]!”[26] Now, that’s a dreadful sense of melancholy! But it’s not far removed from the everyday occurrence of sitting on a bus or a train with somebody and simply engaging in conversation. I warrant that we’re not confronted by people who are abounding in hope.

In a foreword for a book by Benedict, the ex-pope, the guy who wrote the introduction to the book is a fellow called Weigel. And in writing this book, he describes the world in which we’re living. He says it is

a world that … has lost its story: a world in which the progress promised by the humanisms of the past three centuries is now gravely threatened by understandings of the human person that reduce our humanity to a conjuries of cosmic, chemical accidents: a humanity with no intentional origin, no noble destiny, and thus no path to take through [life].[27]

No sense of origin, no understanding of destiny, clueless! Clueless! You wonder why it is that the teenage population and the youngest amongst us in our Western cultures are as buffeted as they are? It’s because they’ve been brought up to believe these things—that they emerged by chance, that they’re preserved by whatever, and that they eventually are left with nothing at all to look forward to.

The Christian hope is fantastic. It is fantastic. It is a hope that is grounded in the past, because Jesus rose; it is a hope that remains in the present, because Jesus is alive; and it is a hope that is completed in the future, because Jesus is coming. And Peter understands this. And that’s why he drives it home: “to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.”

I was with one of my friends here—one of my new friends. He took me to some little place down the road. Apparently, Victoria and Albert had liked it, or the people who built it liked Victoria and Albert; I’m not sure. But there were a couple places there that they said they had antiques from the ’50s. And I said to myself, “Golly, that’s my stuff! That’s in there? This can’t possibly be the case.” But I said, “Mark, let’s look in here, ’cause I want to see what is here that might possibly be an inheritance, you know, for one of my children. I could take it back from the Victoria and Albert museum, as it were.”

Now, what do you have that you’re going to pass on? What kind of inheritance? There’s only one imperishable inheritance that is untouched by death and by decay, that is undefiled, that is unstained by sin, that is unfading, that is unimpaired by time. And it is that, says Peter to these folks—many of whom would have felt, “There is very little that we have in this world. We’re alienated in the context. It would appear that the wind is blowing fiercely in our faces. But this is a wonderful letter, and we’ve only read a small part of it,” they would be saying to themselves. “This is quite remarkable.”

“Kept in heaven for you.” It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it? In fact, when Paul writes to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 2, he says, “Eye has not seen”—it’s invisible—“nor ear heard”—it’s inaudible—“nor has the heart conceived”—it’s actually inconceivable—“the things that God has prepared for them that love him.”[28] And the Spirit of God, by the Word of God, gives to the people of God just an inkling of these things, just every so often. The hymn writer puts it,

Sometimes a song arises
For the Christian as he sings.
It is the Lord who rises
With healing in his wings.[29]

Don’t you sometimes feel that, maybe on a Sunday evening, when you’ve gathered amongst the people of God? It’s maybe been a rotten week. Maybe there were difficulties at home—whatever it might be. And all of a sudden, just in the magnifying of God—in saying to one another, “Oh, come, let us magnify the Lord together; let us praise his name”[30]—it’s almost as if a tiny edge of the curtain of eternity is pulled back, just for a moment or two, just enough for us to be reminded, in almost a visceral way, the truth of the Word of God, which we’re laying hold on.

Well, they might have been prepared to say, “Well, I suppose there’s an inheritance that is kept in heaven for me. But I wonder: Am I going to be able to keep going long enough in order to get the inheritance?” Well, he answers that as well: It’s “kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded,” or kept, “through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed [at] the last time.” Paul does the same thing when he is writing his final letter to Timothy and he lets him know that “henceforth,” he says, “there is laid up for me [a] crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will [give] to me”—and then he adds, “and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.”[31]

You know, it is remarkable, isn’t it, the keeping power of God? I mean, I know there’s somebody out here who’s been coming here for a hundred years—which is longer than the thing has been going, but that’s all right. I’m a novice. This is my first and last visit, I would imagine. But the fact is, we understand, if we look on one another, the keeping power of God. It’s amazing that he keeps us. It’s the old farmer’s prayer in Scotland: “O Lord, keep me kept.” “Keep me kept.”

You know the hymn:

Unnumbered comforts to my soul
[Your] tender care bestowed
Before my infant heart conceived
From whom those comforts flowed.

When in the slippery paths of youth
With heedless steps I ran,
[Your hand] unseen conveyed me safe
And [brought] me up to man.[32]

The keeping power of God.

That might be a word to somebody today particularly. You’ve just been wrestling or struggling in that way. The devil is a roaring lion,[33] loves to unsettle us, loves… I mean, I have friends in the Free Church of Scotland who write to me all the time, and they’re wondering about this and wondering about that. I don’t understand what it is causes it in them, apart from the pushback of the Evil One himself. But we may be absolutely certain that having been made new by the mercy of God, born to a living hope, prepared for an inheritance that is there for us, we are being kept.

Now, the promise of that—that blessing, described, anticipated—is not yet. And it’s tempered by—tempered by—the possibility of or the inevitability of various trials, which, if your Bible is open, you see there in verse 6: “In this you rejoice”—that prospect—“though now for a little while”—and a lifetime would be a little while in light of eternity—“if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.”

Having been made new by the mercy of God, born to a living hope, prepared for an inheritance that is there for us, we are being kept.

The Puritans used to say that trials come to prove us and to reprove us. And the experience of undeserved suffering lies heavy on our shoulders. In fact, in the King James Version, it uses that terminology: It says, “Even though you are in heaviness through various trials…”[34] It’s just as if somehow or another, a dead weight has rested upon me—that somehow or another, when I waken in the morning, it appears that the Matterhorn is in front of me, that there’s no possibility of scaling the heights of this at all, that the blankets have formed up in such a way as to make it the greatest challenge. There’s a heaviness that comes.

And yet, in the experience of that, Peter says to these dear beloved ones, “In this—in this, through these various trials, through these challenges, through these sufferings—you may prove the providence of God, the grace of God that has called you and keeps you and will fulfill all these promises in you and through you.”

Again, hymn writers have been so helpful to me, because they summarize so much in short order. There’s a wonderful hymn that begins, “My God, I thank thee, who has made the earth so bright.” And so it’s like, “I thank you it’s a nice day.” And then it goes to “I thank you, too, that thou hast made joy to abound.” So far, so good. It’s a good day. But my favorite verse goes like this:

I thank thee more that all my joy is touched with pain,
That shadows fall on brightest hours and thorns remain,
So that earth’s bliss may be my guide and not my chain.[35]

See? Liberated from that which offers to us security and hope and treasure and everything else into a world that is not a carefree world. And what he points out is that if perishable gold is purified by fire, how much more should faith be tested in the life of the Christian? And the testing is purposeful, you see in verse 7: “so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it[’s] tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

And then he goes on to say, “Though you have not seen him, you love him.” And he comes to this inexpressible joy.

It’s perhaps just worth noticing that Peter includes himself in verse 3, where he is referring to the first-person plural. There he says—I’m just looking for it now—that “he has caused us”—that is “us”—“to be born again to a living hope” that is ours. But here, now, he employs the second-person plural. It is to “you,” he says: “Though you have not seen him, you love him.” I think the contrast is just simple: It’s the contrast between Peter having seen Jesus and his readers never having had the privilege of seeing Jesus. We have not had the privilege of seeing Jesus. So this fits perfectly, doesn’t it? “You haven’t seen him, yet you love him.”

Remember, Jesus has prayed not only for his disciples in John 17 but for those who will become followers of Jesus through their ministry. And he prayed to the Father, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.”[36] We have come to believe in Jesus through the word that the apostles have proclaimed. And we haven’t seen him, but we love him. I was struck by the fact that our brother said that he had fastened on this seventh and eighth verse. I understand that. I want to love him: “I love you because you have first loved me and purchased my pardon on Calvary’s tree.”[37]

And “Though you have[n’t] seen him, you love him,” and “Though you do not now see him, you believe in him.” “Believe in him.” The verb there is in the present continuous tense. In other words, “Your believing is a habitual or typical activity.” It is to believe. To believe.

I do believe, I will believe
That Jesus died for me,
That on the cross he shed his blood
From sin to set me free.

“When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within,” the sin within, “upward I look and see him there who made an end [to] all my sin.”[38] “I do believe, I will believe that Jesus died for me.” And Peter is driving this home.

The joy that is recounted for us here is an “inexpressible” joy, and it’s “filled with glory.” It’s not only joy then, but it is joy even now—joy that is different from happiness, joy that may sustain us in times of suffering and disappointment and trials.

Surely all of us, if we had ten minutes of each other’s time, would tell of how we have been greatly helped by living through an experience with someone who in the most devastating circumstances has, in a way that is entirely realistic and sensible, expressed a deep-seated conviction that they’re being held and kept by God and that there is even joy in the midst of all of this.

Years ago, in speaking at a conference outside of San Francisco, I must have said something along these lines, because afterwards, a lady came to me to tell me a story which was so stirring to me that I wrote it down, and that’s why I’ve still remembered it. It went along these lines: She came to me, and she said, “A friend of mine was suffering through brain cancer and its treatments. His relationship with Jesus was such and his response to his trials were such that the nurse that was on duty wrote as a critical comment in his chart, ‘Mr. X appears to be inappropriately joyful.’” In other words, she could find no basic premise as to why there should be a radiance about this man. This is a spiritual geography I can observe from a distance. I haven’t been in that position. But when I see it, I long for it—that I might know this, that I might understand this, that I might live in the light of this.

And Peter is writing to these dear ones in that context, and writing to us in our context, and saying, “This is all yours in Jesus.” Robert Louis Stevenson one day in his journal wrote in his journal, “I have been to Church to-day, and [I] am not depressed.”[39] And one of the features of Scottish Christianity, the further north you go, is that you would be surprised, really, that these people had the joy of the Lord; they’ve got it so remarkably hidden away. And it’s just too bad. It is too bad.

Because—and we must draw this to a close—he then says about this salvation, in 10 and following, the prophets and the angels have their own angle on this. “The grace that was to be yours,” he says, was “prophesied about.” And these prophets “searched and inquired” diligently. They were putting the pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of God’s redemptive plan. And the salvation story they were searching and inquiring about, and they were dealing with a time and a place and a fulfillment that was out and beyond them.

And so, for example, Isaiah 52:13 and following: “Behold, my servant shall act wisely. He shall be lifted up and he shall be exalted.”[40] Now, I don’t know if your mind works this way or not—and if it doesn’t, then I apologize for declaring how mine does. But when I read that and I imagine Isaiah stopping just for a coffee around eleven in the morning—and Mrs. Isaiah says to him, “So what were we working on this morning?” And he said, “Well, I just finished the thirteenth verse: ‘Behold, my servant shall act wisely. He shall be lifted up, and he shall be exalted.’” And Mrs. Isaiah says, “And who exactly is that?” And Isaiah says, “Well, right now, I don’t have a clue. I don’t have a clue.” Of course he didn’t have a clue! But men spake from God as they were led along and empowered by the Holy Spirit.[41] The prophecies that Isaiah and the rest wrote were inspired by the Spirit of Christ. It is his witness rather than their witness that they’re made aware of in verse 12—the witness of Christ, “the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.” And it became apparent to them “that they were serving not themselves but you”—that is, us—“in the things that have now been announced,” so that “to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven…” It’s really quite fantastic.

When we’ve studied in the Old Testament—and I tried for a while to go through 1 and 2 Samuel, with help from abroad, and we frequently went to Romans 15:4 to remind ourselves of what we were doing, where there Paul writes, “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” And they are able, those Scriptures, to make us wise for salvation through faith in Jesus.[42]

The same Spirit that inspired the prophets was poured out at Pentecost to enable those who then went to preach the good news about Jesus to the ends of the earth. How important it was for those disciples to have that Bible study that came there in Luke chapter 24, so that the pieces of the puzzle in their minds might be clarified for them—so that Peter, having learned those lessons, is able to go out post-Pentecost and testify to the reality of these things! The testimony of the prophets and the New Testament apostles and gospel missionaries to today is unified in pointing to Jesus in order that we might live increasingly in a world that knows Jesus. So the prophets are on their tiptoes, gazing down the corridors of time. And the angel hosts, we’re told, are looking over the ramparts of heaven. They “long to look” into these things. They would have given anything, if you like, to be in on this.

We won’t delay with the angels, but again, a hymn that just helps clarify the matter for us. I think it’s an old Salvation Army song or something, but I only knew one verse of it, and it’s the one verse that I needed. It goes like this:

There is singing up in heaven
Such as we have never known,
[As] the angels sing [of victory]
[And] the Lamb upon the throne. …

But when [we] sing redemption’s story,
They will fold their wings,
For angels never [knew] the [joy]
That our salvation brings.[43]

“Concerning this salvation”: chosen by God, born anew to a living hope, guaranteed an inheritance, living through various trials, discovering in his goodness inexpressible joy.

Stars will fade and mountains fall;
Christ will shine forever,
Love’s unfading splendor.
Earth and heaven will bow in awe,
Joining in salvation’s song.[44]

Father, we ask you to write your Word into our lives tonight and in the days that lie ahead in order that we might live to the praise of your glory. And we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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[1] Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, “Speak, O Lord” (2005).

[2] See Revelation 11:15.

[3] John 20:30–31 (paraphrased).

[4] 1 Peter 5:10 (ESV).

[5] 1 Peter 5:12 (ESV).

[6] 2 Peter 3:17 (paraphrased).

[7] Matthew 16:17 (paraphrased).

[8] See Matthew 16:23.

[9] See John 1:42.

[10] See Mark 3:14.

[11] See Acts 6:7; 12:24; 19:20.

[12] John 17:14 (ESV).

[13] John 6:37 (ESV).

[14] 1 John 4:10 (ESV).

[15] Stuart Townend and Andrew Small, “Loved Before the Dawn of Time (Salvation’s Song)” (2007).

[16] Alan M. Stibbs, The First Epistle General of Peter, The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 73.

[17] Carol Owens and Jimmy Owens, “Children of the Kingdom” (1974).

[18] Isaiah 26:3 (ESV).

[19] Romans 5:1 (KJV).

[20] Carl R. Trueman, Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2022), 169

[21] William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 4.1.

[22] William Reed Newell, “At Calvary” (1895).

[23] Joseph Clayton, Bishop Westcott, Leaders of the Church 1800–1900, ed. George W. E. Russell (London: Mowbray, 1906), 110–11. Paraphrased.

[24] Acts 16:30–31 (ESV).

[25] Ephesians 2:4 (ESV).

[26] William Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.2.

[27] George Weigel, foreword to Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times; A Conversation with Peter Seewald, by Benedict XVI (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2010), x

[28] 1 Corinthians 2:9 (paraphrased).

[29] William Cowper, “Sometimes a Light Surprises” (1779). Lyrics lightly altered.

[30] Psalm 34:3 (paraphrased).

[31] 2 Timothy 4:8 (ESV).

[32] Joseph Addison, “When All Thy Mercies, O My God” (1712).

[33] See 1 Peter 5:8.

[34] 1 Peter 1:6 (paraphrased from the KJV).

[35] Adelaide Anne Procter, “My God, I Thank Thee” (1858). Lyrics lightly altered.

[36] John 17:20 (ESV).

[37] [William Ralph Featherston?], “My Jesus, I Love Thee” (1862). Language modernized.

[38] Charitie Lees Bancroft, “Before the Throne of God Above” (1863).

[39] Robert Louis Stevenson, quoted in William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, vol. 1, Chapters 1 to 10, The New Daily Study Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956), 117.

[40] Isaiah 52:13 (paraphrased).

[41] See 2 Peter 1:21.

[42] See 2 Timothy 3:15.

[43] Johnson Oatman Jr., “Holy, Holy, Is What the Angels Sing” (1894).

[44] Townend and Small, “Loved Before the Dawn.”